Washington (CNN) -- Keeping up pressure on congressional Republicans after his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama launched three days of campaign-style speeches on Wednesday with a visit to a North Carolina manufacturing plant that he said epitomized his proposals for job creation.
Obama toured the Linamar Corporation plant in Asheville before telling workers that Congress should pass his proposals laid out in Tuesday night's speech that call for more job training and ending tax subsidies that reward sending jobs overseas.
"We've got to stop with some of the politics we see in Washington sometimes that focuses on who's up and who's down," he said.
In all ways, the president appears to be "up" after a well-received annual address that continued to define the political and ideological divide with Republicans over the role and size of government, as well as how to reduce chronic federal deficits and rising debt.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, seem "down" as the Washington debate focuses on impending budget cuts mandated by a past agreement with Democrats and the White House to raise the federal debt ceiling.
In the GOP response to Obama's speech at the Capitol, conservative Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida rolled off a now-familiar list of criticisms of the president's approach while repeatedly referring to Republican proposals rejected by Democrats.
For both sides, the messaging sounded similar to last year's election campaign in which Obama won the White House for a second term and Democrats strengthened their Senate majority while narrowing the GOP advantage in the House.
After the November vote, Republicans were forced to concede on one of their most steadfast issues by agreeing to higher tax rates on top income earners as part of a January deal to avoid some of the harshest impacts of the so-called fiscal cliff.
The agreement put off action on mandatory budget cuts, which are set to take effect March 1. While Obama has called for averting them with deficit-reduction steps that would include more tax revenue and spending cuts, Republicans reject new tax revenue increases.
